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Semafor Signals

Thousands flee southern Lebanon as Israel strikes more Hezbollah sites

Updated Sep 24, 2024, 8:59am EDT
Middle East
Cars flee north from Lebanon's southern coastal city Sidon. Ali Hankir/Reuters
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The News

Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in southern Lebanon as Israel conducted a second day of airstrikes, killing more than 550 people and wounding thousands of others.

Israel said it had struck more than 1,500 Hezbollah targets since Monday in its biggest onslaught since the two sides began exchanging fire following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. The Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and paramilitary group, has said it will not stop firing into Israel until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.

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Israeli outlet Haaretz reported a political source as saying the Israel Defense Forces’ Lebanon operation sought to deter Iran from triggering a regional conflict. Meanwhile, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian told CNN that Israel’s latest actions risk tipping the Middle East into a broader conflict.

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SIGNALS

Semafor Signals: Global insights on today's biggest stories.

Israel may be creating conditions to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities

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Sources:  
Chatham House, Sky News, The New York Times

While sources have said Israel’s attacks on Lebanon have the goal of de-escalating tensions, some experts worry the long-term strategy is to take aim at Iran, which leads the so-called “Axis of Resistance” between Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen, the director of the UK-based British think tank Chatham House wrote. With Iran turning into a “threshold nuclear weapon state” and Israel looking to eliminate any “threats that are existential” to the country, the prospect of such an attack appears increasingly possible. Israel had already made its point in April, with a strike on Iran that had limited consequences but sent a clear signal that it had the power to attack Iran’s nuclear centers, The New York Times wrote.

US appears to not want to feed into the escalation

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Sources:  
Stars and Stripes, Reuters World News podcast

The Pentagon announced Monday that it is sending an additional small number of troops to the Middle East, but didn’t add any detail because of “operation security reasons,” Stars and Stripes reported. The lack of detail around the operation is unusual, a Reuters correspondent told the outlet’s World News podcast. The US has previously been open in disclosing troop deployment details with the goal of deterring outside actors, especially Iran. But “what we’re seeing right now is something else,” the correspondent said: “It’s a sign of this moment we’re in, where there’s so much escalation that the United States just doesn’t want to feed into it.”

Broadening conflict in Middle East likely to define Biden’s legacy

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Sources:  
CNN, The Washington Post

The latest Israeli strikes have widened the breach between Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden. A broadening Middle East conflict could define Biden’s foreign policy legacy, and play a key part of his address to the United Nations General Assembly later today: Rather than use the speech to solely tout his foreign policy achievements after five decades in government, he will likely have to focus on “short-term solutions” to the regional conflict, CNN noted. Biden “wants to go out on a high note,” an expert told The Washington Post, but “the Israel-Lebanon issue is going to make that very hard to do.

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